大象传媒

I was six years old when the second world war started and my sister just two. We lived with our parents in a newly built end of terrace house on a small estate on the outskirts of a village near Hainult Forest, some 20 odd miles from London. The car era had not begun so the houses were built wihtout garages and there were no cars parked in the streets as there are now. My father cycled to work on the outskirts of the City. We were a cycling family. One of my earliest memories is of our Sunday afternoon cycle rides into the surrounding countryside - my sister in a chairseat on the back of Dad's bike, Mum next on an old upright model nicknamed 'The Bedstead', and me pedalling away at the rear on a solid tyred 'fairy cycle' as it was then called.

At first being at war made little difference to our family, apart from the novelty of the blackout, rationing, and having an Anderson shelter in the back garden. Then we were issued with gas masks (another diversion for us children). I was cross because I only qualified for a junior adult model but my sister, as she was under five years old, had a Micky Mouse version, which was much more fun. We had to carry the gas masks with us everywhere in a shoulder bag as gas attacks were expected. It says a lot for our parents that although they must have been terribly worried by the situation, we just thought of it as a game and were only slightly anxious about the claustrophobic effect of trying them on for gas mask drill.

School was Hainult Forest C of E Primary about a mile away and I walked there and back twice a day with Ronnie from next door, my fellow mischief maker. Hazel, my little sister, joined us once she was old enough.

There were two classes, infants and juniors, about 50 to 60 children in all. A surface brick shelter was built in the playground. When the air raid warning went we filed in and sat on wooden benches in the dimly lit, dank smelling shelter. Normal lessons were suspended and we had singing from the National songbook while our teachers handed round Horlicks tablets in lieu of sweets (which were scarce and rationed) and generally a good time was had by all until the All Clear sounded.

We learned to cope with rationing and each had a Ration Book. Later in the war my little sister complicated domestic matters by becoming a vegetarian. Her ration book had to be altered to allow an extra allowance of cheese instead of meat. This was because during the war, apart from Digging for Victory and trying to produce as many homegrown vegetables as possible, people were also urged to keep livestock, pigs , poultry and rabbits for food. One awful day, Timid, our favourite rabbit, was presented at mealtime, for reasons of economy. This was too much for Hazel, hence a year of vegetarianism. I could not face eating Timid either but was prepared to be magnanimous about unknown animals.

As well as rabbits, another of Mum's wartime hobbies was keeping a few laying hens for eggs to supplement our rations. She would buy a dozen day old chicks bringing them back to our warm kitchen in a cardboard box which was placed next to the range where they would spend a week or so cheeping loudly, while a coop and run was made for them in the garden. We loved to pick up the little yellow balls of fluff to pet them. Sometimes there was an odd black one among them who came in for some extra affection. When their incessant cheep cheep got be be too much of a good thing we would drape a large duster across the top of their box and the cheeping would get more and more drowsy until they were all asleep until morning feeding time.

Once the birds were old enough to be outside they became less popular and as adult feathers grew they became scraggy and bossy. It was part of our war effort to feed them on coming home from school, cooking saved up potato peelings in a special Chicken saucepan, adding balancer meal and dolloping large lumps of this evil smelling gruel into their run. It was no mean feat doing this surrounded by voracious beaks and flapping wings as half a dozen of them fought to push each other out of way, eat first, and escape from the run in that order. We did have a few extra eggs in season, if the hens didn't go off lay but this daily chore seemed to us a high price to pay.

We got used to the grey 'economy' loaf, dried eggs and Spam - which we quite liked. But we missed out on early cookery lessons at home as we were never allowed to make experimental cakes or pastry because food was scarce and not to be wasted. However, Mum's cooking was good, especially her pastry. She did not have a rolling pin but used to roll out the dough with a clean empty milk bottle, the raised letters on the glass impressing our tarts and pies with the legeng 'Hitchman's Dairies', innocently advertising our local milkman. We used to think this very special at the time and quite pitied everbody else who only had plain pastry with no writing on it.

When air raids first started, before we had the Anderson shelter, we used to sleep in the cupboard under the stairs as this was considered to be the safest place in the house. We children had our doubts about this and insisted on inspecting it minutely for spiders before consenting to bed down for the night. Later on we slept on bunks in the shelter. One of the great problems with these shelters was the dampness and condensation on the metals walls, but on the whole people made them quite comfortable with lighting, rugs and tea- making apparatus.

We were evacuated towards the end of the war when flying bombs and rockets were the danger. I was not keen on the idea of going away from home nor of being responsible for my lively little sister, but Mum said that if ever we really needed her she would come on her magic carpet (as in the film of 'The Thief of Bagdad' we had recently been to see), and bring us back home, which made it all right and a bit of an adventure again. So we said goodbye to our parents at home, were labelled with our name and address, and sent off to school, gas masks over our shoulders, almost as if it were a normal school day. Standing with my little sister in line in the playground, I looked round for Ronnie hoping for a bit of cheeky reassurance but he was furiously blinking back tears like the rest of us.

We were sent to a little village in Suffolk. Ronnie went to a village a few miles away from us. It might as well have been another country. We did not meet for weeks and then things were different.

We were not assigned to our billets in advance and one of my bleakest memories is of waiting in a strange schoolroom among a crowd of children who had travelled down with us on the train, hand in hand with Hazel waiting to be chosen by people willing to take us in. I believe in some cases, members of the same family were split up and sent to different places.

We were lucky and were billeted together at a farm where there were two boys of about our own ages and we began to try to settle down. We walked to the two classroom village school much as we had done at home; learned the names of each of the herd of cows on the farm and helped to bring them in for milking. At harvest time there was a day long batch baking session by the farmer's wife (in spite of rationing) and we took this out to the men in the fields together with tea in a billycan. The boys had long sticks for rabbiting. As the wheat was cut the rabbbits were driven into the centre stand, making wild dashes out to escape the combine harvester, and were clumped by the boys with their sticks. We girls did not care for this game at all.
But I can still remember the smell of that wheatfield in the sun, the warm tea, buttered scones and teacakes, and then trailing home tired and dusty in the last of the light.

We were evacuated for less than 6 months, for the war in Europe was drawing to a close, but at our age it seemed like a lifetime. Judging by the letters our parents sent and the visits they made to us, they must have missed us as much as we missed them and home. Hazel went home first after a bout of homesickness brought on by falling face downwards into the nettles from the wall of the old pigsty. I could have returned then but thought I wanted to stay. I knew I had made a big mistake as soon as I ran up the field with the boys to wave goodbye to Mum and Hazel as their train went by. The farmer's wife took in more evacuees and things changed after that. A few weeks later I caught a bad dose of influenza and wrote to say I wanted to come home. Would Mum come to collect me? Just as I was falling asleep on the night train going home, Mum reminded me, half jokingly, in a whisper, about the Magic Carpet promise. It made me smile, so did going home.

Ironically the area we were sent to must have been equally as dangerous as our home, for Suffolk was where the big American air bases were and a major target area for the enemy. Indeed there were several flying bomb raids near the village where we were evacuated.

We came home with traces of broad Suffolk in our speech for a while but were soon scooped up into the warmth of our family and friends, and the little village in Suffolk became just a selection of memories. Warm memories like tucking myself away with a book in one of the big old haywagons in the barn, when I didn't want to play with the boys, and happy days at haymaking time. There were sad memories too, parents visits, all too short, meeting Ronnie on the road halfway to his village, our Mum with a message from his Mum (who couldn't come that time), his look of misery. School dinners of horrid burnt potatos in their jackets. Even now I can never smell that dish without a wave of loneliness washing over me. And whenever I hear the wail of an air raid warning, in an old film or on the radio, it gives me pause, and a half forgotten fear returns.

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